Workers operate Alcan smelter despite closure plan
Published by MAC on 2004-02-12
Workers operate Alcan smelter despite closure plan
Story by Robert Melnbardis, Reuters News Service
February 12, 2004
Montreal - Union members have rejected Alcan Inc.'s latest offer on closing an outdated 90,000-tonne aluminum smelter in Quebec and workers continue to produce metal at the facility, the company said this week.
About 550 workers at the Arvida smelter at Jonquiere, about 250 kilometres north of Quebec City, are making aluminum around the clock despite Alcan's plan to gradually phase out production at the plant over the next three months.
Margo Tapp, spokeswoman for Alcan at Jonquiere, said the two sides are at an impasse despite the help of a labor mediator appointed by the Quebec provincial government.
"We must take back control of our operations so we can proceed with the decisions we have made," she said.
Union officials said they were waiting for Alcan to convene new talks on the issue.
Alcan, the world's biggest aluminum maker by sales after its just-completed takeover of French rival Pechiney (PECH.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) , said in January that it wants to close the 60-year-old plant because it uses outdated Soderberg smelting technology that has higher production costs and pollutes more than modern pre-bake methods.
Under a tentative agreement reached with the union late last week, Alcan wants to close one potline immediately, another by April and the two others in April, Tapp said.
"In the agreement, we promised there would be no layoffs," she said.
But the company and union have not sat down to iron out those details, she added.
The workers, who folded their union into the Canadian Auto Workers, Canada's largest union, in November, have said Alcan failed to keep promises to create secondary aluminum manufacturing jobs in the region instead of simply producing aluminum ingots.
Tapp said there have been no accidents or mishaps during the past few days, but company management is concerned about the risk of injury to workers from the high voltage and hazardous materials and equipment used in production.
Alcan has some 88,000 workers worldwide, not including those at Pechiney. Some 1.6 million tonnes of Alcan's 2.4 million tonnes of primary aluminum smelting capacity, excluding Pechiney assets, is located in the province of Quebec, which is rich in hydro-electric power.
Closing Arvida's Soderberg potlines would reduce Alcan's global primary aluminum production capacity by about 3 percent. The company produces another 163,000 tonnes of aluminum at Jonquiere using pre-bake technology.
Alcan shares closed 68 Canadian cents, or 1.2 percent, higher at C$58.88 in Toronto this week, and advanced 68 cents to close at $44.50 in New York.